Official Comcast CableCard Thread!

Ok my fellow Tivo owners. I just got the Tivo HD for fathers day. Great gift in my opinion. I have hooked the tivo up on a second tivo, not the one it will reside on. I have gone through the guided setup. How long should I wait for it to get all the updates? I have it hard wired currently, but it will be going wireless. Is there a way to force the Tivo to get all the updates now or is it a waiting game? If I understand right the newest version available is 9.3???? Should I go ahead and contact comcast? Does anyone know if the Marietta Georgia office allows for pick up of the cable card? I am so happy to get rid of the MOTO box................. Anything I should do now? Sorry for all the questions I just want to make sure I get everything done before comcrap comes out. TIA

Update:
Okay called Comcast Sunday night they stated I can pick up the M card from my local office. They stated it was open Monday. Not true. I drove there and they were closed. I called again monday as I was leaving the office and the next rep promised me that they do have the M card. So today I go stand in a hour long line. Get to the desk and ask for a M card. Sorry sir you will have to have a truck roll for this. Me I am very angry. I call comcast poor lady. I now have a truck scheduled to roll this upcoming Monday. I will keep all posted on how it goes. Oh by the way when I called Sunday the first time the guy said and promised to me you need two M cards for your TIVO. I said no if I needed to it would be the S cards. I want one M card. We argued for about five minutes before I asked to be transferred because this dude did not know what he was talking about.

Welp, looks like there's two scenarios for Comcast customers: (1) everything works smoothly right away and all is joy and rainbows, or (2) an epic struggle against the forces of evil and cable men. Put me down in the "2" column.

Call Comcast's 800 number on Monday. Ask how to get a CableCard. The rep, without even the slightest hesitation, says I can pick them up at my local office. Boy, that sure sounds easy. Maybe I lucked out! Roll on down to the local office, and of course they've never heard of anything so preposterous as a customer picking up their own CableCard. They'll happily schedule a truck roll though, and a qualified Comcast technician will happily insert the card into my TiVo for a modest fee sometime between 6am and 9am.

Take the morning off work, get up at 5:30 am. Have to be dressed and ready for the tech, who will undoubtedly be there promptly at 6! At *nine*, he calls and says, sorry, they're out of cards, but I could call back and reschedule. They'll know when they're getting more in, he says. Fails to explain why someone couldn't tell me yesterday.

I promise to have mercy on the poor CSR who fields my phone call later this morning, I tell myself.

Welp, looks like there's two scenarios for Comcast customers: (1) everything works smoothly right away and all is joy and rainbows, or (2) an epic struggle against the forces of evil and cable men. Put me down in the "2" column.

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Comcast's performance seems to be very location dependent as well.

Where are you located?

Here in Minnesota, while not 100% smooth, the only issue I had was a miscommunication that I needed two cards for 2 TiVoHD's and not that I needed 2 cards for a single Series 3 TiVo. The tech was on-time, and the first unit was working about 20 minutes after he arrived. I needed to schedule a second visit for to get the second card as the tech did not have an extra card for me. That second visit happened about a week after the first, and also went smoothly.

In the first two months of service, I've had a single 4-day period where I had issues receiving two channels that I now believe was signal strength related. Other than that, it has been a positive, trouble free experience for me.

I meant to add that: I'm in Alexandria, VA. I wonder what decides how good service will be. Maybe regional managers? Seems odd that mere chance would result in so many wildly different situations for different customers.

Interestingly, I called the 800 number again, and got a very nice woman who called my local warehouse (!) and, frustratingly, confirmed that they *did* have CableCards in stock. She credited me $20 and scheduled me another appointment for Monday night.

I meant to add that: I'm in Alexandria, VA. I wonder what decides how good service will be. Maybe regional managers? Seems odd that mere chance would result in so many wildly different situations for different customers.

Interestingly, I called the 800 number again, and got a very nice woman who called my local warehouse (!) and, frustratingly, confirmed that they *did* have CableCards in stock. She credited me $20 and scheduled me another appointment for Monday night.

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The Alexandria techs finally got me dialed in, so hopefully you'll be up and running soon

The next hurdle unfortunately will be your nice new channel lineup freezing up on you after a few weeks of bliss

I'm not sure what the deal is with these HD boxes, but I sure wish someone over at Tivo would figure it out.

Here's my disaster of an experience with Comcast in Atlanta, Cobb County region west of the ATL:

Got my Tivo HD and scheduled a card install for a couple of days after (already knew I couldn't pick these cards up even though some CSR's say you can).
First day of scheduled install, Comcast calls and says we don't have any cards. So I let them reschedule 3 days later.
Second day of scheduled install, they AGAIN call and say they don't have cards. I am not happy and demand that a manager personally see this through. They agree and schedule an install for 3 days later.
Third day of install, they call and say we have the cards now, but they're all bad. WTF??? Now I get mad and start calling the Atlanta region senior VP's office, Comcast executive support in Philly, my local cable franchise authority, and finally post a message on comcastmustdie.com.
Don't know which one of these got them motivated but they started jumping fast after that. Next day I had an exec support rep call and assure me that they WILL be rolling the lead tech AND the area supe the next day with brand-new M-cards.
So yesterday they show up as scheduled with a couple of M-cards. Easy install, end of story? Of course not. They put the card in and call in to get it paired up, then the Tivo loads the channel map (which takes a while). Afterwards, I only get channels 3-32 and a handful of local HD channels! And, you guessed it, I have the digital preferred pkg, which is all of the digital channels. After much back and forth, swapping cards with no change, and MANY phone calls to get the right person on the line (was after 5pm at this point), the right person gets on and says 'oh, these cards were never initialized before warehouse let them go'. Area supe is PISSED because he personally picked them up, and he promised that he will get the process fixed (uh...). Quick init to the card and bam, all channels working on both tuners. Install time was an hour and 15 minutes, when it should have been about 15 minutes.
After that I thought I was golden until I soon started seeing 161-38 errors, which interrupt shows, recordings, etc. But these have not reappeared today, and I can only assume that since the Tivo is busy indexing the new channels and programs that there must be some delays that affect the card. Hopefully I won't see that again.

So dbeubanks, I saw your post above and I sure wish you better luck on the install than I had, because they were so clueless. I could tell that the area supe hated cards and the whole process, but to his credit they did get it done (under duress from mgmt, I guess). And I got an M-card instead of two S-cards, so hopefully I won't get charged an extra $1.50 a month.

Woke up this morning to find my Tivo with a wonderful grey screen on both tuners. Changing channels would sometimes bring up the channel, but it got worse as the day when on. Rebooting did not help. Finally I could not get anything up and I opened a chat session with Comcast after seeing the pairing screen show all zeros for Cablecard(tm), Host, and Data. The UnitAddress was all zeros with 3 digits at the end. Host Validation was Unknown 00.

As soon as I said that the chat representative said they'll have to have a tech come out. I wonder if they changed service in my area and the S cards don't work anymore? Tried re-seating both card with no luck. Signal comes up 100.

I found out that that the COMCAST (formerly Adelphia area) southern suburb of Pittsburgh, PA has a different system for their activation of Cable Cards then the COMCAST traditional areas. (I had stopped at the local (formerly Adelphia) office for my area and asked for the "the guy" that knows activating cable cards.) He said something about it being different to activate the cards vs the rest of Comcast.

He also said you are NOT pairing the two cards together but pairing Each Card to the HOST ID (the TiVo ID (like a MAC address for the Tivo slot)... that needs to occur and the card authorized. It does not work like that one post about hitting the card with the second CCV hit and not the first one... at least not for Comcast Adelphia area.

Hence why the 800 Comcast don't know how to authorize (Even if you get lucky and get someone who knows anything about cable cards). All the reps I spoke with said there is NO way they gave you the cards directly. I said umm they did! then they kept arguing to send out a tech to install. I said its done I just need them activated... I asked to speak to their supervisor trying to get to Level 2 or 3 support but they refused. I had to press until they left a message to call me...

Anyway this guy, he said all he needed was the info I filled out on the form that came with the SA cable cards I received (Host ID and the other number that pops up) plus the two numbers printed on the card itself. Well he said it will take 1 hr for it to work. I was not able to go home to confirm. I had to head to work .. no go when I got home that night...

it didn't work for me I think because I had the feed going thru a multihouse splitter amp that distributes all my cable, Ethernet, and phone. I have since rerouted the direct line from the cable modem to the Tivo. so nothing in between. I hope he can re-authorize my cards Monday.

Like cluelesspa above me, I live in the Pittsburgh, PA area, and was a customer of Adelphia until Comcast bought them out.

I got the TivoHD on Father's Day for my dad, and also called that Sunday to set up a switch from Basic cable to Basic digital. Lisa, the comcast rep I talked to was very helpful and understood exactly what I was trying to do (get one multistream cablecard for the tivo.) She set up a truck roll on the following Thrusday, 6/19.
That day, a gentleman from TriWire (Rick or Rich I think) contracting showed up. It seems Comcast farms out most of their installs to various contracting companies instead of doing it themselves. While the installer was a nice enough guy, he had no clue how to install a cablecard (he told me he had never done one of these before). He just slid in the card, then promptly called Comcast tech support to have them "walk him through it". I even had to run the remote through all the settings for him. We got all the numbers called in, then it prompted to redo the Guided Setup. He told me that once it finished with the setup, everything would be fine. WRONG! No channels, just black screen and "Seaching for signal on Cable In..."
So about an hour later, I called the Comcast support line (the local number on my bill, not the 1-800 number). I talked to Barb, told her what was going on, and she said she would contact "dispatch" and have the installer come back to the site. She would then call me back to give me a time frame for when he would return. Two hours later and NO CALL. Called again, this time talked with Pat, who said it was showing in the computer that the installer was being dispatched back to my house, and that he was just on a big job that was not going as fast as they first though (big surprise). He said that while I wait, they could try sending a signal to the cablecard to reinitialize it. That didn't work, so I hung up to wait for the guy, who was supposed to call when he left the job he was on. Two more hours, and NO CALL. Called again, got Terry, who summerized that it was too late in the day, and they would have to reschedule for the next day (Friday, 6/20). I agreed, but only under the condition that they send out a bona fide Comcast tech. She agreed, and even put a note in the service call specifying that.
The next day...no tech showed up during the four hour window. Not even a phone call. Called Angie at Comcast, she said she would call dispatch and then call me right back. Sure enough, five minutes later, the installer called and said he was on the way.
Max from TriWire contracting showed up with 2 new M-Cards to try (at this point I'm smaking my forehead). Max also stated he had never worked with either a cablecard or a tivo before. Great. He did the same exact thing that the other installer did, and still no channels. He advised me to call Comcast again, and this time request an actual Comcast tech. I told he that I had already done so, we went over the work order, and it was written right on it! So after he left, called Comcast again, talked with Summer. I was very forceful with the poor girl (I am usually polite to people just doing their job, as I also have a job in customer service, but sometimes enough is enough). She guaranteed me that she would have an actual Comcast tech out, but the soonest he could do it was Sunday, 6/22. So far, only three days without any TV.
Of course, I had to work on Sunday (Thurs and Fri were my days off, I foolishly thought that they would have it working way before my weekend was over.) My poor mother was the only one here, and she knows nothing about technology.
Fortunatly, Comcast finally got it right. According to moms, the guy really knew his stuff, tested the card and the cable connection, then ended up having to climb the pole. Apparently when Adelphia ran things, they had installed a "filter" on the line because we only had basic, and those filters were now blocking the digital signal (how Comcast could still read the card on their computers, if these filters were blocking it, I don't know.) I'm not sure if this was the actual cause or if he was just blowing smoke, but as of sunday night, the Tivo's fine, and all the channels are coming in.

Slowbiscuit, I'm in Cobb too, and the first half of your post sounds exactly like my experience -- except I still don't have a working card. (I left for vacation before they could send someone else out.) At least you didn't get the surly technician who just sat on my sofa the whole time, whining on his cellphone to someone at Comcast (while I did all the work) about how he hated cable cards and they weren't paying him enough to put up with this crap. I finally told him to please leave now. I called Comcast tech support and got a sympathetic guy who promised to "escalate" my complaint -- except I haven't heard anything else in two weeks. Now that I'm back from vacation, I'll have to call them tomorrow.

Would you please either post a reply or send me a private message with the phone numbers you used? Thanks!

Glad to hear, though, that all the S-cards are faulty, rather than it being a problem on my end. I had a beloved old TiVo for three years, but I've been using the AWFUL Comcast DVR since I got HD in February. It froze on me tonight. Can't wait to get rid of that thing. Too bad that as an apartment dweller, I'm pretty much stuck with Comcast.

Like cluelesspa above me, I live in the Pittsburgh, PA area, and was a customer of Adelphia until Comcast bought them out.

... Apparently when Adelphia ran things, they had installed a "filter" on the line because we only had basic, and those filters were now blocking the digital signal (how Comcast could still read the card on their computers, if these filters were blocking it, I don't know.)

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That is why I picked up my cards at the office. I have a series 3 HD so needed two cards. they are both M Cards. anyway I hope (they dont have a filter on my connection from the underground distribution box... I will have to check tonight. the cover comes off easily.. its just the hornets that live under the cover that worry me

that would explain why he couldn't get my activation to work! if it doesn't go today with the line direct connected to my TIVO. I will check the connection....

Has anyone else had to pay a 35$ service fee for comcast to come out and install a single cablecard? This seems extremely high to me, but they said they had to come out here and do it and won't let me go pick one up myself. It's just a TivoHD install, that shouldn't be 35$ to install something that will be giving them a 6$ monthly fee from here on out.

That is why I picked up my cards at the office. I have a series 3 HD so needed two cards. they are both M Cards. anyway I hope (they dont have a filter on my connection from the underground distribution box... I will have to check tonight. the cover comes off easily.. its just the hornets that live under the cover that worry me

that would explain why he couldn't get my activation to work! if it doesn't go today with the line direct connected to my TIVO. I will check the connection....

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That could be the problem with your hookup as well, I suppose. But like I said in my first post, that may have just been some excuse the guy told my mom who told me. Who knows what the problem really was? And I would have no idea what those filters would look like or what you could do with them to make the signal work.

The best advice I can give you (and anybody having problems) is to make sure you stress to the rep when you schedule a service call that you want an actual Comcast tech. Anyone from TriWire or any other contracting firm will not have the knowledge or ability to help.

Has anyone else had to pay a 35$ service fee for comcast to come out and install a single cablecard? This seems extremely high to me, but they said they had to come out here and do it and won't let me go pick one up myself. It's just a TivoHD install, that shouldn't be 35$ to install something that will be giving them a 6$ monthly fee from here on out.

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For me (Pittsburgh, PA market) the service call was $16.95.

The first cablecard is free, the 2nd cablecard is $1.50 per month (Multi-stream cablecards act like 2 regular cablecards, so one M-card is also $1.50 per month.)

Hey Guys. I am new here and just ordered my TIVO HD series 3 today. I hope all goes well. I will keep everybody updated. I went to the Comcast office where they told me a tech must install the card and they have a new card that can handle two streams. I will let you know how it goes.

That could be the problem with your hookup as well, I suppose. But like I said in my first post, that may have just been some excuse the guy told my mom who told me. Who knows what the problem really was? And I would have no idea what those filters would look like or what you could do with them to make the signal work.

The best advice I can give you (and anybody having problems) is to make sure you stress to the rep when you schedule a service call that you want an actual Comcast tech. Anyone from TriWire or any other contracting firm will not have the knowledge or ability to help.

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Nope it worked last night all set both cards were authorized on the CP menu of the Cable Card on the TIVO when I got home from work.

What the filter will look like is a LONG cylinder like thing screwed inline with the cable line coming into your house. I used to have one but I forgot they pulled it when I went Cable Modem as it would block the Cable Modem signal. now they can block channels via your cable box or cable card profiles.

the thing will have collar around the screws so you can't remove it without a special tool.

anyway talked to the guy at Comcast and he did not get around to activating it on Friday so that is why it wasn't active. anyway happy and all set now...